Being energy, and an account not a bill, you can cancel your direct debit and set it back up again no problem, no missed payments nor any debt owed provided the outstanding amount is clear.
Even with a running balance there’s no negative impact as energy accounts generally carry a balance for the bulk given how it works.
That said, poor show on Octopus part, id just cancel the direct debit and set it back up with a specified amount.
You should also be able to change the amount in the online portal, and sometimes the x amount of days it says can’t be amended within is usually bs, but very few have stood their ground with it.
I don’t know, but it’s hassle. I imagine they’ll get quite nasty about it, with the various debt threats the industry deploys. Octopus already bills abnormally to begin with that’s really at odds with having a monthly direct debit. There’s no monthly bill. They bill when I submit a meter reading.
I can’t cancel it with Octopus. At least not easily or quickly enough. If I cancel it with my bank, that won’t immediately reflect with Octopus either, and probably won’t until they try to collect it.
They could just:
See that my account is more than one month in credit in the height of winter so there ought to be no concern.
See that I’m making the correct monthly payment.
Leave my account alone.
But someone’s just looked at the direct debit, looked at my predicted use (which is about 1500kwh higher than my actual use) and decided nope, let’s hassle this customer again.
I’ve rejected the change. They won’t reply to my reply until after the direct debit has been taken. I’ve set aside enough to cover it. If they collect it it’s yet another complaint with the regulator against them. It’s very annoying. Every time a customer support agent goes near my account they cause my nothing but hassle and a lot of wasted time. I’m still reeling over the last guy who closed my account, cancelling my engineer appointment in the process, by thinking my accepting the engineer date was my telling them I’m moving out on that date so now I have to wait another 6+ months.
I signed up to Agile and it said it would take about 14 days
2 minutes later I got an email and everything switched over instantly
Now gonna see if I can plot some graphs in grafana (I ingest metrics from Home Assistant into prometheus ) and see if I can get some decent data out of it. I’m most interested in getting some average pricing and seeing whether the peak periods drag that average up or not.
£2.20 as of January’s prices! and a 99p round up (I pay £220.01 on top of my £1 DD).
It’s worth it if they leave me alone. If they won’t it’s not and I’ll just go back to paying my entire monthly bill via direct debit.
I reassess my energy in Spring, so thinking about moving to just paying for what I use rather than paying a fixed amount balanced out over the year. I’ll benefit more from the interest that way too. And hopefully means no one will decide to do a direct debit review in the future.
Haven’t been keeping up with this thread, but am curious how people feel about Octopus Energy customer support these days?
I have a query about some new unexpected credits and charges on my account and sent an email to Octopus for clarification 9 days ago. Didn’t receive a response so sent a reminder 5 days ago. Still no response so called on phone today. Received no apology or expression of surprise for lack of response to email (giving me the impression its normal occurrence). Telephone support person did say there seems to be an issue with my account and will pass on to someone to investigate. Should get a response in a couple of days. Will see how that goes, but I expected better from a company that seems to constantly receive best/recommended supplier awards.
Twitter/X replies same day within hours most of the time - but I know some have reasons to not want a profile there.
Support is generally ok IMO, my meter decided to be broken and stop sending reads from 3/1 and not having it fixed until 27/2 which is lonnnnnnng and I’ve zero clue how much energy I’ve used since 3rd.
That’s more down to engineer availability though not service itself.
What is the situation with fixed rates nowadays , is it worth going for one? or is there more price changes on the way. I am currently on flexible tariff with octopus.
octopus says my current tariff annual amount is : £1781
So as expected, replacing my gen 1 electric meter with a gen 2 didn’t make my gen 2 gas meter suddenly start sending regular readings to Octopus, in fact, it’s not connecting at all now.
Type your MPAN* into the first box and tick the box under it, then tap/click on ‘Check meter’
In the displayed results, can you see the ‘Communication Device’, ‘Electricity Meter’, ‘Gas Proxy Function’ and ‘Gas Meter’ (plus any connected IHD/CAD devices) entries?
*To find your MPAN, from the Octopus account home page (when you are logged in), click/tap on ‘Personal details’, then ‘API access’ (in ‘Developer settings’), then scroll down to find the Electricity meterpoint MPAN number
) and see if I can get some decent data out of it. I’m most interested in getting some average pricing and seeing whether the peak periods drag that average up or not.
R-